14. Flawless Facade

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Pursing my lips, I stared in the mirror as I carefully cleansed my face. Then with gentle, smooth strokes, I applied concealer, then foundation, finishing of with a light dusting of powder.

Not wanting to look too artificial, I just brushed on a light dusting of eye shadow and blush, quickly lining my eyes and lips. I slipped my favourite Farmasi lipstick into my purse as there was no use applying it now, it’d just fade. Ever since I’ve heard about there being crushed insects in certain lipsticks, I’m scared to try out new ones. I mean crushed insects? That’s just EWW!

Glancing at my watch I realised that there is still 30 minutes before the transport is expected to arrive. This is all quite strange to me. Apparently all guests are going to be picked up in some fancy type bus or something. Where I come from, everyone drive themselves to weddings.

I carefully put on my dress and then sighed realising that its still a long while before I’m going to be picked up. Daddy is gone to sort out some work so here I am alone and bored.

My mind began roaming, wondering how the wedding would be. They were being very secretive about the whole thing, not even giving the venue. Hence the bus picking up all the guests. Aziza had hinted that it was themed but other than that, I managed to dig nothing more out of her.

I gently settled myself onto the couch taking care not to crease my dress. Taking my phone out of my purse I opened my ebook reader and soon found myself immersed into another realm. I was so engrossed that I barely felt the time passing and the hooter sounding, startled me.

I promptly slipped my phone into my purse, threw on my Abaya and began tying my niqaab. I then walked as briskly as I could in heels this high towards the door. Opening the door I faltered. I blinked a few times wondering if I was seeing right.
The sight before my eyes was a little difficult to take in. I mean a limousine of all things. Gosh! Isn’t that like for VIP’s?

Yeah, it’s a bus but a limo bus all the same and judging from last night’s function which was only immediate family, the wedding today was bound to be almost a 1000 people! How many limo buses will need to be hired to transport that amount of people?! These people must be stinking rich or plain stupid asking to get bankrupt! Or maybe there’s only one limo and the rest are normal buses….but that would kinda classify me as VIP in their eyes now wouldn’t it?

This wedding just got stranger and stranger. I gingerly seated myself in the limo feeling a shiver run down my spine at the thought of how weird everything was. For some reason it seemed like my heart was sending me signals that today something nasty was going to go down. Everything still felt too surreal and dreamlike. ‘A sweet dream or a nightmare?’ my mind taunted…

Be very careful when buying cosmetics. Ensure that none of the ingredients are haraam.

Natural red 4, carmine, cochineal, cochineal extract, crimson lake, carmine lake, C.I. 75470 and E120 are the names used in certain products to disguise from us the fact that they using crushed insects. This is completely haram and extremely disgusting too.